3d camera/layers with stoke effect?

[Tim Kurkoski]

It’s a render order thing. By turing on the CT switch, you’re changing the order in which AE applies effects, transformations, and masks.

To be more specific, here’s a paragraph from the AE7 Help file on the CT switch:

The Continuously Rasterize switch is also useful when applying a mask to a solid. When masks or effects are applied to a nested composition that has this switch set, the layers in that nested composition are first rendered on their own, then masks and effects are applied, and then the result is composited into the main composition. This rendering order means that the blending modes of the nested layers are not applied to any underlying layers in the main composition, and that 3D layers above and below the collapsed layer cannot intersect or cast shadows on one another.

The important part here is that the layers in the sub-comp are rendered without their effects, then the effects are applied. Thus causing your problem.

You may want to try putting the strokes on their own separate layers within the parent comp and matching the transformations of the original layers. Either that or, yes, you can build the strokes into the AI file and just not have to bother with effects in AE.

[Broken]

Hmmm….. I’m positive you weren’t aware of this this, so don’t take offense, okay?

You’re trying to have your cake and eat it too, in AE terms. You want the sharpness of Illustrator vector lines plus you want the ability to animate those lines. Sorry, but it ain’t gonna happen. So are you totally sunk? Nope!

If your Illustrator document exists as line art already, great. In AE, copy any Illustrator paths onto a solid that is the exact same size as its corresponding Illustrator layer. You can apply the Stroke effect to that new layer, and use the new layer as a track matte for your Illustrator line art. You’ll animate the stroke effect to reveal the line art beneath it. Cool, huh?

To pull it off in 3D, just make the stroke layer 0.5 pixel closer to the camera than the line art. If you’re moving that line art around, it would be a VERY good idea to parent a stroke layer to its corresponding line art layer.

Now, the stroke will still get aliased… but you’ll only see the aliasing at the spot where it reveals the line art. And you ought to be able to fix that with a little blurring on the stroke layer. And the Illustrator line art will remain sharp.

Make sense?

Dave LaRonde
Sr. Promotion Producer
KCRG-TV

[Judas Beast]

great tip – makes pefect sense.
i had stumbled across this same cunning trackmatte/blur method in my desparation to use the stoke on scaled up vectors and hoped there was a “proper” way of doing it. its good to know I havent been doing a “bodge” job after all

would the same thing happen to other effects applied to scaled up vectors?

thanks
Judd

[Adelina Lela]

Hello,
I had this same type of situation. I had a AI layer in a precomp, and I applied a stroke effect to it. In my Main Composition, I had a 3d camera and my precomp, but my AI layer with the stroke effect was gone (i.e., couldn’t see it anymore). If found out that if I turned off the Continuously Rasterize option on my precomp in my Main Composition that the stroke effect and my layer both appeared again. I wasn’t able to have the good vecter quality of my AI file, but in my pre-comp I just sized up my AI layers (in my pre-comp, my AI layers were all on Continuously Rasterize) until I had a good size where even if I zoomed in or out in my Main Composition, I still had good quality. This is an old post but I hope this helps anyone who may have this same problem.

AL – After Effects Animator